In some virtual computing environments, the time period from conception of a pre-configured hyper-converged computing device (or appliance) to providing the pre-configured hyper-converged computing device (or appliance) to market may be prolonged. For example, disparate parties that provide different features and functionalities for the appliance typically take a prolonged time to reach a working agreement regarding what each party is responsible for in the development of the appliance. Moreover, the different parties may have different interests and goals from one another which may prolong the development of the appliance.
The prolonged nature of agreeing on determining a working relationship may delay the time to market of the appliance. As a result, the revenue of the appliance sold in the market place may be negatively affected due to the prolonged time to market of the appliance.
In other instances, the time period to set-up a pre-configured hyper-converged computing device upon purchase may be prolonged. For example, it may require hours to deploy a first virtual machine upon the first time powering up the appliance. In particular, it may take the customer specialized skills to understand the settings and parameters that may be required to provide to the appliance such that the appliance properly supports a virtualization infrastructure. Additionally, in conventional systems, there may be various software components from disparate parties. As a result, numerous license keys may be required to be entered to install/execute the software. Moreover, numerous EULAs may be required to be entered to install/execute the software. All of which prolong the time to set up the appliance and deploy the first virtual machine.
As a result, the burden on the customer to properly set-up the appliance prior to first deployment of a virtual machine may deter the customer from purchasing the appliance which would negatively affect the revenue to the software providers and/or the distributors of the appliance.
It should also be appreciated that creating and managing hosts and virtual machines may be complex and cumbersome. Oftentimes, a user, such as an IT administrator, requires a high level and complex skill set to effectively configure a new host to join the virtual computing environment. Additionally, it may be cumbersome for a user to manage software updates to a host. For example, a software update may negatively impact other software applications and/or the underlying hardware of a host.